This clause in the appeal that the dying robber made to the dying Jesus is even more remarkable than the one we commented on last week, "This man hath done nothing amiss." How could he believe that Jesus would yet come in his kingdom, when he saw him hanging to the cross and about to die? This belief had perished out of the hearts of all the disciples of Jesus. Their hopes respecting the kingdom were all crushed in abject despair when the sentence of death was pronounced by Pilate. Even Judas, who may possibly have hoped that Jesus would escape from those to whom he had sold him, when he heard of the sentence, was so overwhelmed with remorse and despair that he dared not live to witness the end. How, then, could this robber still cling to the belief that Jesus would yet come in his kingdom? He was the only living man, so far as we can know, who still clung to this belief. Was it because he had evidences which the apostles had not--information which they had not received? It would be preposterous to think that he had. Was it because he alone of all men had the true conception of the kingdom, that conception which we now enjoy, and which the apostles enjoyed and taught after the next Pentecost? Was it because he believed that Jesus would rise from the dead, and had already conceived the idea which his actual resurrection afterward imparted to his disciples, that he would then, as victor over death, proclaim and establish a military dominion? Jesus had said so little about his resurrection that even the apostles did not expect it, and it is highly improbable that this robber had even heard of his predictions of that event. What, then, was it that [410] imparted to the soul of the robber this remarkable belief, and that kept it alive even when Jesus was dying?

      Is it necessary to look any further for the answer than to what he had himself heard from the lips of Jesus? He could bear witness to the blameless life which Jesus had led, he had witnessed the miracles by which Jesus demonstrated that he had come on a mission from God, and he knew that the chief burden of the great Teacher's preaching was the kingdom of heaven which he was to set up. Being free from the prepossessions which biased the minds of Pharisees and scribes as to the nature of the kingdom, he believed that as such a man as Jesus could not lie or be deceived, the kingdom in some shape or form, and at some time, and in some place, would certainly be established. So, when at last he who had made these solemn predictions and promises was passing through the agonies of death, the robber still believed, that in time, he knew not when, in some place, he knew not where, and in some form, he knew not what, the kingdom would appear. It was a sublime faith in the pledged word of Jesus, a faith which neither life nor death could unsettle, that brought forth the wondrous words: "When thou comest in thy kingdom." What a rebuke this to the faith of many thousands who now stagger at little obstacles, falter in the presence of obscure texts of Scripture, turn pale at the "opposition of science falsely so called," and deny the Lord rather than suffer with him. Let us sing the hymn, "Oh for a faith that will not shrink."

[SEBC 410-411]